And the next Chancellor is?

German polls are predicting a win for Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, but what parties will make up a coalition, and indeed the German Opposition is what's causing a fuss. It's expected that the far right Alternative for Deutschland Party, or AfD, could come in with 11% of the votes with the chance of becoming Germany's opposition party. This is the first time since 1949 a far right party would be part of the Bundestag, and could enjoy some traditional privileges in this position.

But in a world where the political, economic and strategic landscape is continuously shifting, Germany faces many other large questions.

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Andrew J. Smith :

Interesting podcasts as always, including how politics and politicians are observed and analysed in Germany versus Australia, former is policy and latter is personalities?

Australia has not had bipartisan conservative leadership for decades since the LNP adopted US GOP style political media, PR and campaign methods.

However, I disagree with some of the comments made about the AfD 'modern' leader and it's economic policies; nothing new and we can observe same in Australia.

Firstly, EU scepticism, anti-immigration sentiment, nationalist economic policies and primacy of the nation state is straight out of the US nativist movement from generations ago.

Like Brexit, Trump and now we hear in Oz (recently AFR/Oz Institute on podcast) e.g. political journalists negatively claiming we only have 'immigration for economic growth' suggesting a binary but ignoring the multi-faceted nature ie. temporary net contributing residents to support govt. budgets needed support retiring baby boomers (Germany's working age population is falling off a cliff as we speak).

In fact it's the 'steady-state economy' theory cooked up in tandem with the Club of Rome which was also sponsored by VW and some other oligarchs, including US fossil fuels, who had presence in Nazi Germany.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

They astro turf using young modern types to present plausible theories (drawn via the Club of Rome and national socialism for the top oligarchs) acceptable to both mainstream media and encouraging young people to vote nativist while presenting as 'liberal and environmental' understanding that white conservative Christians are not 'sustainable' in a multicultural world.